Project 949A Oscar II

[XabbaRus]

I've decided to move this here as it is now a proper WIP.

Here are a couple of renders of where I am at at the moment.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g56/BMCKent/OscarII-171008-1.jpg

3/4 view from the stern. I took my original model and redid the tail as I described in obstacle course.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g56/BMCKent/OscarII-171008-2.jpg

Here I have created new fins. Just the ventral fin to do now. I seem to have a few issues on the verticle fin with black areas. I might need some advice with that.

Once I have the fins and control surfaces done I want to meshsmooth my entire hull. Then I am going to work on creating the missile doors, then a new sail with escape capsule and at the end creat the torpedo tube doors.

[XabbaRus]

OK I need some help.

I have started on the missile doors.

I cut away the polys in the hull to make the missile doors and the extruded an edge to the correct length of the door.

I then detached the polys and extruded edges to form the door. As you can see from my doors they have black shades on them. where have I gone wrong?

Should I have just deleted the polys to make the hole and then created the door as a new object?

[Skyraider3D]

The bright and dark areas you experience are smoothing artefacts. You'll need to reassign the smoothing groups on them to look properly.
To understand smoothing groups better, try this: Make a box, collapse to Editable Poly. Now go to the smoothing group rollout, and click on single polygons at a time. Notice how each polygon has its own smoothing group, resulting in hard looking edges that makes this object look like a box. Now select all polys and assign the same smoothing group to all of them. Now you see how the box looks really screwed up, as you've basically told Max that all the polygons are smooth with eachother, which of course they are not. It's only a shading effect but it's hugely important to the way your object appears. Likewise, create a sphere. Collapse to editable poly. Now clear all smoothing groups. Your sphere will look segmented as you've told Max that the polys are not smoothing with one another.

I hope this helps! :)

[XabbaRus]

Cheers that makes things a lot clearer. Apart from that how is the Oscar looking?

OK got that sorted.

I'll be looking to attack the sail now, I'll update with more renders when that is done.

One quick thing. When I look at the renders you guys do f early work the effect is like looking at a real plastic kit model before painting rather than a CGI object. How do you do that, I'd like to try to get mine looking the same before I map it so that highlights and details are shown up better.

[Chukk]

Well you asked the right guy(not me, Skyraider). Go to Skyraider's web page and download his excellent e-light script for lighting your model. Then I would put a box around your model, reverse the normals(texture and color are inside now), then render your model. The box color and light will reflect back onto your model helping to light the underside and give it a more realist look(advance lighting required). Also if/when you apply a material to your model, for looks, knock down the reflective property of the color, it will give it a matt look a little like a resin plastic material. As you notice this will also highlight a lot of lighting and modeling issue. ;) That is my technic but there a lot better modelers here and I also would love to see their "tricks". Maybe show their material texture/color settings.
Cheers.

[XabbaRus]

Cheers guys. The lighting script works a treat though it is a little dark at the moment.

I'll post more renders when I have worked on the sail.

[XabbaRus]

Used the e-light and have worked on the sail some.

[Skyraider3D]

The lighting script works a treat though it is a little dark at the moment.The preset for E-Light is to work as a secondary (environment) light source. The main illumination then be provided by a "sun". If you use E-Light as the sole light source, simply ramp up the multiplier to about 4 to 5 or so. Also make your dome no bigger than 3x your object's outer dimensions, otherwise the shadow effect isn't as nice. This seems to happen on your renders now.

[XabbaRus]

OK just tried that, works great. Thanks for answering my questions. Just put in a hatch for the large satcom array. It works but I'm still not completely happy with it. I'll post a render of that tomorrow...

[XabbaRus]

OK just a quick shot of the sail with the SatCom hatch open. Apart from that haven't done much. Real life is getting in the way.

I made the Satcom hatch by first making a cylinder to the right size and shape and then using a boolean to subtract it from the sail. Then extruded edges to make hatch and detached the polys. It does work but I wonder if there could have been another way. I have used booleans in the past but they can cause some weird stuff though this one was OK.

Fortunately the other hatches are mainly rectangular and I have a number of polys I can use for that.

[Skyraider3D]

Real life is getting in the way.Story of my life... :rolleyes:

I have used booleans in the past but they can cause some weird stuff though this one was OK.Yup they can be twitchy, but once you work out their limitation's they're actually not too bad. I find myself using them more and more, though in the past I avoided them like the plague.

[XabbaRus]

The almost complete Oscar II.

Just need to put the windows in the sail. Then it is on to mapping :( :rolleyes:

[Skyraider3D]

There appears to be a smoothing error down the side of the hull. If that's where you cut out your hatches, you'll need to add a small correction to the angle of your polygons, so they are more or less planar at the place of the seam.

currently:

/
|

should be:

|
|

This only has to be a small strip of polygons, so it won't affect your model too much.